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Have Tottenham had more injuries than anyone else? Here are the total number of games missed through injury for every Premier League team.
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Ange Postecoglou has not been in the best of moods lately. As the injuries pile up at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, he’s been on bleakly comical form when asked about just how much all those sick notes had hampered his team’s chances of success – as he memorably said just a couple of weeks ago following a fresh slew of knock and sprains, “every time I’ve seen the light at the end of the tunnel, it’s usually been an oncoming train.”
So perhaps it’s understandable that he wasn’t feeling especially sympathetic towards Manchester United manager Ruben Amorim after Spurs beat a United side who had quite a few absentees of their own.
“If I check my office, I don’t have any sympathy cards from other managers,” he said after the 1-0 win on Sunday. “Welcome to my world. But that's for one game. Now do that for two months.”
But just how much cause for complaint does the Spurs manager have? Have Spurs really been all that unlucky, and how do Manchester United and other teams’ injury lists compare?
We’ve used Transfermarkt data to tot up the number of games missed by first-team players for every club in the Premier League so far through the first 25 games of the 2024/25 season, which seems the fairest way of determining just how unlucky different teams have been.
There are caveats here, of course, as an injury to a star striker clearly carries more weight than when a back-up centre-half tweaks his hamstring, but we’ve tried our best to offer up relevant caveats in the comments – and we’ve only included injuries to players who have played first-team matches this season or likely would have done had they not been crocked, to try and avoid youth players inflating the numbers. Anyway, that’s the pre-amble out, of the way, so let’s see how every team ranks…
If you want evidence that a healthy squad makes a massive difference, there’s plenty here. League leaders Liverpool may not have seen much of Federico Chiesa and lost Alisson for a little bit, but they’re still among the most fortunate sides – as are high-flying Nottingham Forest, who have been remarkably fit all year outside of Ibrahim Sangaré and Danilo, who account for almost all of their missed minutes.
Fulham are another side who are arguably performing above expectations, and their own short list of fitness issues probably accounts for that in part. All of which said, West Ham are here to prove that health doesn’t guarantee points. They may have had some rotten luck up front with Niclas Füllkrug and Michail Antonio both enduring long-term injury problems, but overall they can’t use the physio room as an excuse.
Crystal Palace might wonder if they shouldn’t be doing better given their injury history, although persistent interruptions to Adam Wharton and Eberechi Eze’s campaigns haven’t helped. They have a fair few short substitute appearances in there and the Eagles have perhaps been slightly less lucky that the raw numbers imply. Still, they can’t complain too much compared to most of the league.
=13. Aston Villa – 68
=13. Southampton – 68
We’re drifting towards the average with a group that includes Aston Villa and Chelsea – should either side miss out on European qualification, then their respective managers really can’t point to injury issues as the reason, although Villa’s knocks and scrapes have piled up a little more of late after a more fortunate start to the season than most.
Unfortunately, should Ipswich and Southampton end up sinking back into the second tier, they can’t really point to injuries as an excuse either, although in Ipswich’s case the number will be rather higher come the end of the campaign due to recent serious injuries to Wes Burns and Julio Enciso, the latter of which feels especially cruel given the gifted Paraguayan’s ongoing fitness issues.
Now we’re getting into the teams who can justify a little bit of grumbling, but as we can see, Postecoglou was right not to extend all that much sympathy to United – we’ve actually slightly inflated their number compared to Transfermarkt’s figures as we noticed a couple of mistakes in their working. For instance, Kobbie Mainoo missed a few games after picking up an injury against Villa back in the autumn, but that wasn’t marked down as being a fitness issue. In other words, we counted that but it’s possible a few other teams have had injuries missed out in similar fashion and as such are lower down this list than they might otherwise be. Even taking those out wouldn’t affect United’s mid-table position, however.
Bournemouth are also testament to the fact that you can do pretty remarkable things even when the injuries are mounting – they’ve had quite a few defensive issues this season and have lost both of their frontline strikers in the shape of Evanilson and Enes Ünal, but are still in with a shout of making the Champions League. In fairness, it’s nice when the teenager who comes in as injury cover turns out to be among the best defenders in the league, as has been the case with Dean Huijsen.
Manchester City can point to quite a few injuries when it comes to providing excuses for their deeply disappointing season, especially with Rodri missing most of the year and defenders dropping at regular intervals, but Newcastle have actually had it slightly worse – although given that quite a few of their injuries were to likely back-ups and rotational options such as Callum Wilson, we’d say City fans do have more right to moan in terms of the impact of their injuries, if not the sheer volume.
Let’s start with Tottenham – yep, Ange Postecoglou has every right to complain and probably does deserve a few of those missing sympathy cards after all. They’ve had rotten luck, especially with so many injuries piling up over the past two or three months.
Still, they’ve not had it all that much worse than North London rivals Arsenal, whose chances of winning the title might have taken a huge hit thanks to long-term injuries to players like Bukayo Saka and Ben White but who are still on course to make the top four. With Kai Havertz and Gabriel Jesus both out for the season now, there is every chance that they overtake Spurs by the summer.
As for the ‘winners’ of this countdown, we do have to put a massive asterisk next to Brentford’s name, because while they’ve barely seen Igor Thiago, Rico Henry and Aaron Hickey they actually only finish ahead of Brighton when you include summer signing Gustavo Nunes. The size of the 19-year-old’s planned role before injury knocked him out of contention for appearances is unclear, so if you exclude him then the Seagulls come out on top. Brighton really have had rotten luck, with countless players missing a month here or a few weeks there. If any managers have the right to grumble, it’s Fabian Hürzeler and Thomas Frank.